Pokemon Trading Card Game Reveals V-UNION Cards

The Pokemon Trading Card Game is introducing a new kind of card, which combines four cards to form one powerful Pokemon. The Pokemon Company revealed new details about the V-UNION mechanic, a new card mechanic that will be introduced later this year. Each V-UNION Pokemon is made up of four different cards, each of which depicts a different piece of artwork. In order to bring a V-UNION Pokemon to a player's bench, that player must have all four V-Union cards in their discard pile. The V-UNION mechanic has already drawn comparisons to Yu-Gi-Oh's Exodia, a monster with an automatic victory condition that is only triggered when all five of its body parts are in play.

V-UNION Pokemon are incredibly powerful, with multiple attacks and abilities. For instance, V-UNION Greninja allows its player to look at their opponent's hand once per turn, can't be poisoned, and isn't affected by item cards played by an opponent. Plus, it has four moves with varying effects, ranging from attacks that deal ton of damage to an opponent's benched Pokemon to a move that prevents an opponent's Pokemon from retreating on the following turn.

You can check out an example of V-UNION Greninja below:

Notably, this isn't the first time the Pokemon Trading Card Game has introduced Pokemon that require multiple cards to enter play. The HeartGold & SoulSilver era of the game featured Pokemon LEGEND cards, which required two cards to play. Unlike V-UNION cards, Pokemon LEGEND cards were played from a player's hand instead of from the discard pile.

So far, The Pokemon Company has revealed three V-UNION cards: V-UNION Greninja, V-UNION Mewtwo, and V-UNION Zacian. These three Pokemon will each be featured in special theme decks that also come with a Professor Burnet card, which has the ability to search your deck for cards and then discard them. While no plans have been announced for the international release of V-UNION cards, the Japanese versions are being released alongside the "Towering Perfection" and "Sky Stream" expansions, which will be released in the US and abroad as "Evolving Skies" in August. We'd expect to see more information about V-UNION cards in the very near future.

The Pokemon Trading Card Game is set to release its "Chilling Reign" expansion in the United States later this month, which will feature Pokemon seen in the Crown Tundra region of the Galar region.